Pink Bullets
by lifeundecided
Summary: Violet's a psychopath with a house full of ghosts to play with. They just keep popping back up, and so does she, even when she lets herself be eaten up by the monster in the basement. But then there's the live boy who's too beautiful to be one of her toys. Inspired by The Shins song of the same name.
1. Chapter 1

She expected pulling a trigger to be difficult, the first time she held her father's rifle in the green and yellow haze of her back yard. A feather light touch was all the little pellet needed to go flying, spinning off into the trees. It set her ears ringing and her eyes wide. Tiny fingers prodding the holes in the bark she had made. Good shot, Violet. Even though she shook; she blamed her little girl arms, spindly and white, too weak to hold the gun alone. Her father worked away most weeks, and her mother thought she was a hazard. After that first day, that meant no more shooting lessons.

On the day of her ninth birthday party she walked in on her father kissing the caterer. Violet was selfish, in the way that girls of her age were: she wanted to be the centre of attention on her birthday. Her father was simply teaching her a virtue which would serve her in later life. But Kyle Greenwell was in the yard, and he had wished her a red faced happy birthday just like the rest of them. She excused herself simply to observe him from the peace of her bedroom. That was when she saw her father, and the girl in the white chef's tunic.

Three days later, the trees were riddled with pockmarks and red dots, the misshapen circles of a child's hand. Close range would be easier. She shot him in his sleep, and the neighbourhood ladies left casseroles on the doorstep of that poor woman whose husband left her in the middle of the night. They blamed the girl Moira who ran the cleaning service, and Violet's misdeed tamed the hungry maw of the PTA for a week at least.

Her mother was Constance. Her new stepfather was Lawrence. She was seven years down the line, shuffled from one therapist to the next. Each one was presented a gift on their first meeting; a new imaginary friend that Violet claimed whispered to her, bent her will, made her put the bullets in the gun and raise its slender neck and point it at the nearest living thing. Nora and Chad and Lorraine, all bitter lovers whose stories mirrored that of her beloved mother's. The doctors sat in their leather chairs with still hands and furrowed brows. Violet was either a psychopath or a compulsive liar; a danger to her community, or simply to herself.

Each one fell into an easy routine. Most diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia, dropped a bottle of placebos into her cupped hands and waited. The label scared her mother enough that she never had the courage to ask about it. She would rather live in denial, unaware of her daughter's monstrous soul.

She was sick. She enjoyed it. She'd be Jack the Ripper come again, all romantic anonymity just feet away from a thick brown file that told her life story, if anyone would think to look. If anyone actually remembered her name.

They found Kurt Cobain's body, and she shot up her school. Violet walked through the front door with the butt of a gun sticking out her backpack, jacket drooping with the weight of ammunition. Not one person looked up. It was like she was already a ghost, and she smiled.

She smiled while she asked the goth girl if she believed in God. She smiled while the cheerleader pissed herself. Then Kyle Greenwell said "That's enough." in the voice he used to comfort his little sister when she cried. Violet thought her face would crack in half. She kissed him on the forehead - goodnight, sleep well - with the barrel of her gun.

When the SWAT team knocked down her bedroom door there was a pistol pressed to her temple, and she waited in silence for them to start the screaming, the questions. That man in front was gonna pop a vein in a second. She knew how it was going to go; she just didn't feel that suicide by cop was ironic enough.

"My boyfriend killed himself four days ago. His name was Kurt."

A lonely bullet made two clean holes on either side of her head.

...

This was too damn perfect.

Her imaginary imaginary friends welcomed her with open arms when she woke up on her bedroom floor, where the pool of blood should have been. She felt cheated, somehow, that she never got to see it. It would have made a nice memory, a stained shirt she could hold as a keepsake. They snagged some police tape for her, however, a skewed house warming gift. Although this house was nothing but cold spots. The ghosts she told the shrinks about were real, and she had just joined their ranks.

She wrote her mother a cordial note on her best stationary, requesting that she stop pilfering the cigarettes Violet had hidden in her underwear drawer. The house went on sale within a week.

The move up to the attic was easy; she couldn't risk Constance taking her things away to burn in some sort of half assed cleansing ritual. She picked up a box, took a step, put it down in the attic. Ghost mojo was definitely a perk of Murder House. The others mainly stuck to the basement or the bedrooms, but the attic had been Violet's favourite place, even when she was alive. That blue bedroom never really felt like it was hers.

Soon she gets bored of the veterans, whose lives seem so small in comparison to the noble war that she was born for. She could have gone down in a hail of gunfire, but nothing's so dramatic as a calm and silent suicide. Hopefully she unnerved some of the black kevlar vests that call themselves heroes because they wear their job title in block letters. Violet Harmon was a martyr for all that's pure in the world.

But Nora mutters and Lorraine smoulders and Chad drinks himself into his estranged lover's reluctant mouth. They start dropping dead within a month of Violet's arrival.

Watching Chad froth at the mouth after gulping down a cocktail of rat poison, cheap rosé and bleach is the funniest thing she's ever seen. But after that he starts checking the cartons he buys in bulk on Halloween.

She gives Lorraine's little girls a bath; their charred skin steams and drops off in chunks. They scream, she comes running, and Violet bashes her head in on the rim of the sink. The oldest asks if she can keep the shards of her mother's skull in a whisper. She's found her protégée.

And when night falls she feeds Nora to her monster baby. Violet's too skinny to be dessert, but the snap of her bones lend themselves to coffee and biscuits.

It takes a day or two to recover, each time she dies. If only they had a camera; while she's out of it her gunshot wounds appear fresh then fade. She feels cheated. It's not asking much, just two little holes.

Then the house works its magic and she loses a year.

When she wakes up it's to a chorus of "She's back!", versus "Shit, she's back." Patrick tells her she's missed Halloween; they're into July and nobody's seen more than a flash of her for twelve months. It's uncommon with such a green ghost, but she's grateful. Because somebody bought the house. They've got hot water and electricity and she has a year's worth of basement grime in her hair. When the other ghosts saw the family come to view the house, they packed her stuff into the rafters because Chad predicted she'd burn the place down if they didn't. She has a reputation and it's thrilling.

There's a tiny pale girl in the bathtub at two in the morning. Her eyes are round in the dark, and it's either a trick of the light or the water's gone black. She refills the tub twice before she's really clean, just floating. Then she hears clumsy footsteps in the hallway and the light gets flicked on; does she disappear or take the chance? But Violet's distracted by this boy who looks more like a man than she'll ever look like a woman. She wants to get out from the steaming water and run a scalding finger down his arm. He looks like a senior, maybe older, maybe younger. His eyes are half closed and he's wearing black boxers and a yawn. Her cheeks are flushed even deeper now, as if he could see her, because she's still sixteen and no boy has looked twice at her since she was nine.

But watching someone in the bathroom reminds her too much of the library floor: the pool under the cheerleader's skirt, so she wills herself into the attic, away from temptation. She distracts herself with her too small hands, when there's a voice in her head that whispers his would fit better. Despite the fact she saw him for all of thirty seconds in the blinding aftershock of darkness to artificial light. She never considered that when she was alive. The only thoughts that kept her up at night relied heavily on gunfire.


	2. Chapter 2

"His name is Tate. He goes to Westfield. If you were still alive, I can bet he'd sit next to you in English. You should count your blessings that reality isn't so cliché."

"What? Chad, seriously, am I not allowed to smoke in peace anymore?"

"Excuse me Elvira. Your bed hasn't been slept in; unless you're rooming with Nora, that means you watched him sleep. Like a crazy person."

His lips pursed at her gesture; here he was, acting the part of supernatural matchmaker, and she threw it back in his face. Chad had always wanted a little girl, but he was surprised at just how childish Violet could be sometimes. At first, he made allowances. Nora and Lorraine never saw her coming, and he kept his mouth shut. Even without his guiding hand he knew Violet could off any one of them. She craved it, she'd do it. She had a reputation to uphold: the teen murderess. It kept her going, the knowledge that she scared them all.

But then she turned on him, and he started being careful. That's when she lost herself. It was all or nothing, just like the day of her death. She wouldn't let them catch her, not before she'd taken out every soul in the library, and when she couldn't watch Chad writhe and twitch and gasp, she was nothing.

The new family changed that.

And he'd be damned if he was letting the chance to make her happy slip through his fingers. When Violet was alive, her mother basically neglected her. So they stole her away - made her think that they were a figment of her imagination, one that her conscious mind had concocted to scare off psychiatrists, one that she herself didn't believe in. They made her selfish and nasty and mean. He'd rather she was moulded in his bitter likeness than empty.

Chad wasn't much better than Constance. He was setting her up for a fall, because she'll end up either nursing a guilty conscience or a broken heart. A year from now, there will be a Tate shaped skeleton in the basement, or a Tate shaped hole in the wall. If that boy runs he'll run screaming.

Then Violet does her favourite trick: she steps off the roof, hair streaming, skirt billowing, and vanishes before she hits the ground. Yes. He climbed on to the roof to talk to baby girl Manson. She didn't know how good she had it.

...

The boy was asleep again. She hadn't really processed his name yet, because she didn't want to. Not while it was wrapped up in Chad's bullshit matchmaking efforts. Did he really think she wanted his help? It had been a thirty second glimpse of living breathing boy, and he thought she was... Lovesick, or something? Even then, she wasn't so pitiful that she couldn't find that out on her own. But she was exercising patience. The meeting had to be perfect. Delivering some sarcastic one liner, she'd grab his attention, then disappear. She'd have him doubting his sanity and she'd drive him as far into obsession as she's been falling in the last twenty four hours.

Tate, though. Nice name.

Violet likes the haphazard way he stacks his CD's - there's no order because they're out of their cases too much, his music is alive, just like him - he fills the house with her kind of music. Songs so angry or sad they're happy because they're beautiful, unassuming, hopeful. His music collection is full of the intelligent rage that personifies the angst ridden teenage girl in her. Everything is frustration that you can't change the world. But she did. She made a corner clean. This house is payment for services rendered. Somebody's looking out for her, putting hell on hold. She'd say her father was watching over her, if she wasn't his killer, and he wasn't stuck here just like his daughter.

Then he starts counting his razors and his joints in pairs. At first, she's disappointed. Her wrists were costume gore; they gave her mother another wrinkle, and her shrinks another problem to solve every time she flashed them. She never understood how they could possibly think her a real cutter. But there's a ritual in the way Tate does it. He recounts a story about Native Americans and bloodletting that sets a red haze creeping through her head, tentative fingertips stroking her wrists, and heat spreading over her skin.

His words are measured and practiced; he tells himself the same story every time. His voice is low, and he doesn't flinch when the skin splits. His breathing doesn't change. That's when she starts to think that maybe this is a freaky religious sacrifice. So she slips behind him and presses her ear to his neck. His pulse is racing. Maybe he can feel the ghost of a ragged breath on his cheek, but she's still invisible, still just air.

And then his hands are slick with blood; she feels violated just looking at him, because he's bathing in it, basking in the red glow, the smell of iron and hot and bothered boy.

She's never seen one before. She wants to fold herself along his spine and watch, but she knows she won't stay invisible for long if she's distracted. So willpower prevails. But the vow of silence ends tomorrow.

...

The ridges of CD cases are familiar territory, and the zipping sound seems to calm her down. It would be best to occupy her hands when he walked in; her feigned curiosity made her look like a stranger. As if she hadn't spent the night in his bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his ribs. She could angle a knife to slot through the bones, hit his heart, do it clean.

His eyes are wide when he sees her for the first time, but nothing else betrays his shock. She thinks she can hear his heart beating fast, but it might just be her imagination. He doesn't look angry, just pleasantly surprised.

"And your name is?"

She had expected him to question her presence in his bedroom first. It was an odd choice for a first question. Direct.

"I used to be Violet."

"Who are you now?"

"A ghost of my former self."

Their voices are hushed, because his first question was quiet, and it's contagious; it makes it feel like they're hiding something, two kids who've never met. But now she's not looking at his ribs or his bloodstained hands. She's looking at his face. Blonde curls, dark brown eyes and a small smile.

It's unnerving. He should be scared, or curious at least. Tate's simply calm.

"What's a ghost doing in my bedroom?"

"It was mine, once. This house is riddled with ghosts, didn't you know? The infamous Murder House."

That was the story. It was a joke to her, until it was real. Death begets death, and ghosts breed like rats.

"I live in the neighbourhood. I just got back from... vacation. And they told me somebody bought the house. You're the first family since mine, it's been boarded up since they moved out."

Shit. She said 'they.' Tate didn't seem to notice, or if he did, he said nothing. So he didn't want to talk to her. Rambling, Violet, you're rambling. There's a sixteen year old girl in his room and he doesn't know how to get rid of you. He's being nice, he probably thinks you're some sort of harmless neighbourhood crazy.

"I'm Tate. You go to Westfield? Transferring senior year was insane. But it seems... Like a shithole."

"They kicked me out. Genius IQ and a bad track record. I was a health and safety risk."

"That doesn't bode well for me."

"Soundgarden, huh?"

"What? Oh, yeah. _Times are gone for honest men."_

It's strange for her, to sit and make conversation about music. She knows him, but she's a stranger. She has to pretend she doesn't know about the razors in the plastic case of Nevermind, or that he slept in that t shirt. But he keeps her talking like he's interested. She runs a hand through her hair a couple times. She makes sure he sees the scars, and she notices the way his eyes light up at the sight of them. They discuss Tate's classmates, the same kids she neglected to play with all her life; the ones she never got a chance to kill. Then they both proclaim Kurt Cobain God. She tells him that when she heard the news, she thought about killing herself. He had the pills in his hand before his sister walked in.

At that, there's a silence. They're comrades in arms. And Violet says it's late, and he nods. She shakes his hand with a wry smile because they both think they've just found their soulmate.

"Your hands are freezing, Vi."

He called her Vi.

"You know what they say. Cold hands, warm heart."

When he closes the front door behind her, she's already in his bed.


	3. Chapter 3

The kids at school said Addie was a monster. That's what the reporters said about Violet. Was it weird, that she felt such a kinship with his sister? There was something about their family, they just seemed... Wholesome. The kind of wholesome that had enough cracks to be tolerable. To be normal, not like Constance's A Grade American bullshit. Addie was twenty one, but she'd never had a birthday shot, or gone to a concert, or even walked to school by herself. She had Downs, and her mother had tragedy in her blood. Vivien had been this incredible concert cellist, before she got pregnant. Before she miscarried and had to deliver a corpse. She called her little boy Beau, because he was beautiful, in the way that funeral flowers are.

Then came Addie, and Vivien went from career to carer in a year. Even now, that complicated things. Violet had always been private in the extreme, kind of anal, kind of scary. But Vivien walked in and out of Tate's room like it was a hallway. So Violet was forced to keep up her best impression of thin air. Part of her wanted to meet these people as Tate's girlfriend, not just a friendly neighbourhood ghost. Part of her wanted to drive them out and sequester him away between stacks of playing cards and Scrabble. And part of her wishes that she wants to be alive. Because it's wrong to be content with four walls and a garden and a boy with four pairs of black Chucks. But she is.

She's easily distracted, as bright minds can be. Thomas Hardy's stolen her attention for a while, which she allows because it's midday. Not even he can paint a picture so bleak as imagining Tate sitting through classes at Westfield. Alone, outcast. Or even worse, accepted. Welcomed into the arms of some Letterman jackets and pom-poms, all because he runs track. If she was spiteful she'd break his legs. But she likes the way he folds them when she's tracing lines on the floorboards, like a little boy.

And she's distracted by the memory of the shape of his knees barely covered by denim so frayed it's just strings of white, when Addie sees her for the first time. There's recognition in her eyes: Tate said she was a smart girl. When she asks if Violet's Violet, her stomach churns as she holds herself in place. This is wrong. Addie doesn't wait for an answer, and Violet knows she likes to talk. When Tate speaks about her there's a smile in his voice. He's the quiet one of the two. She simply says what he's thinking, sometimes. And with a conspiratorial whisper he told her that Addie's bad mouth can't touch what's going on in his head. She's the good one of the two.

And she's fearless. Addie doesn't ask why Violet's in her brother's room in the middle of the day, or how she got into the house. She just talks. It had always been easier to talk to strangers, Violet found. Addie seemed to agree. But even then, they almost knew each other. In a stilted way, through stories and memories and whispers at two in the morning when Vivien was sure to hear Violet's voice, and Tate knew it wasn't humanly possible to disappear fast enough. She liked that; he didn't care for his parents rules, but he'd pretend, because it made them happy. He was selfless and selfish all at once. They'd leave him alone if he was careful enough: if he was careful, they could pretend not to see it.

But then Addie's answering the call of the writing that's covering every surface - the floor, the ceiling, the dresser - not just the wall.

"And then Marcy said the last girl to live here died. She said she was a pretty girl."

...

So she panicked. It was hardly her fault. When your boyfriend-not-boyfriend's sister calls you out on being dearly departed, there's not much you can do. The house likes deception, and Addie's ruined its fun. An hour later, she's still too chicken shit to come down from the attic. There's a part of her mind that's more perverse than the bullets and the poisoned wine and the forced cannibalism; the part that concocts fantasies about Tate. Perverse, because it's pathetic. She can kill hours at a time just inventing conversations between the two of them. Sometimes, she imagines telling him the truth, because maybe he won't care. Maybe he'll like it. Maybe he'll vow to play Romeo and slit his wrists so he can stay with her forever. Or not. Maybe she doesn't care. He's really just a way to check a box in her never ending calendar.

Whatever you say, Violet.

Shuffling cards is somewhat soothing, when all she can hear is the rasp and snap as she spreads them out, drags them together, tries to slot two piles together through too small gaps and ends up fraying the top of each card. Now they have character. Then she senses, rather than hears Tate walk through the front door. So she makes her way down to the basement and plays with Thaddeus. He's her go-to guy for entrails and bones, and it brings back happy memories. She's restless, and pacing, and punching the brick wall until her knuckles split. Then Thaddeus stares at her. It's practically coquettish, for a monster. He flicks out his tongue, and Violet's blood shines on his lips. It's Madonna and child for Satanists.

She's a murderer. She loves the idea. She's fixated with the reality. So why is she hiding from his parents and making small talk with his sister and banishing herself to the basement when she wants to live a little? They're a blip in her timeline. Tate, on the other hand, was a decidedly more permanent fixture. Who was she to deny the house another bauble? It was a collector, a connoisseur of broken souls. His was shattered. Violet wasn't sure she had one, and that just wasn't fair. She wasn't one to let debts go unpaid. But Addie was most definitely a problem. Violet had watched her, when Tate's breathing had slowed and he wasn't nearly as interesting any more. She had seemed harmless before, but now...

Violet could see some of herself in her. She's a sadist, and that's sad. Because there's some sort of moral killer code in Violet's head that tells her she ought to take this wayward soul under her wing. Mold her in her own image and set her loose. There's an appeal to playing God, and she could so easily make Addie evil incarnate. Send her out to spread the message of fear, then have her rise again when the house calls her back. Eternal life for everybody, so long as your idea of heaven is Murder House.

Adelaide Langdon died for your sins. Because this world is a goddamn filthy horror show and it's all your fault.

Alas. Addie's more of a threat than a weapon. And she's smart, but pliable.

...

"Would you rather... Be paralysed from the waist down, or have your dick bitten off?"

"Shit. You're cruel."

"So's life. Now choose."

"When you say bitten... am I getting head? Do I at least get one final blow out before I'm eternally emasculated?"

"I was thinking wild dogs. With a decent chance of rabies."

"Damn. No question, I'll take paralysis. As long as you promise to wheel me around until we're old and grey. The beach, the park, the record store..."

It's when he says things like that she wants to scream, jump off the roof, feed her left arm to Thaddeus, let the twins beat her to death with wooden blows, eat a bullet, douse herself in petrol and drop a match, be Charles' next volunteer, slit her wrists.

Tell him the truth.

He's her best friend, undoubtedly. But astonishingly, she's his. He doesn't talk about people at school. Or maybe he mocks them, complains about their painfully narrow minds and even smaller intellects. But one day he came home with bright eyes, and told her the most gruesome story about a school shooting.

She thought she could feel bullet holes pressing themselves into her temples.

Nobody would talk about it, or give him a name, but he'd seen the plaque. The memorial in the library for the Westfield Fifteen, all bright young minds snuffed out by the twisted cruelty of a psychopath. Then the librarian called him a sicko and threw him out. But he knew that it was a girl, probably Violet's age, actually, who waltzed into school with a rifle and blew them apart. The ones that died would have been seniors now, and so would the murderess. He'd have liked to meet her.

The day Tate had chosen paralysis over castration, she sat beside him for dinner, a book in her lap. She hadn't had a family dinner since her father died, and she wondered if he had ever sat beside Constance and Larry the way she did Tate. He was so different around his family. His smile screamed genuine, whispered bored, angry, frustrated. She had noticed his distaste for small talk. Ben, his father, was not so observant. He quizzed Tate on school, on track, on his friends. She heard Tate drop names like Leah and Gabe; the captain of the football team and his girlfriend. Ben was clueless; she could see the hint of a smirk as Tate ducked his head. She could practically hear him laughing.

But when Addie spoke, it was different. Violet almost felt guilty. His face was softer, his eyes trained on her; he'd give her no doubt he was listening, even if no one else was. People looked at her in horror, or they looked through her. Outside of her family, she wasn't a person. Tate gave her the confidence she carried. He just had to hide his own in the process.

Then she asked Tate if they could go for a walk. Violet's hands gripped the back of her chair, and it seemed nobody noticed her smooth Addie's hair back into place. She couldn't look at Tate, even though he couldn't see her.

Violet made her way down to the basement, sliding down the brick wall until she was side by side with Thaddeus.

She heard the screech of tires before everything went black.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's note: Praise Ryan Murphy, we're getting Taissa Farmiga back next season! I'm writing this to celebrate. I know nobody's interested, but I'd love for Taissa to play a young Jessica Lange. My dream plot is for Taissa to meet a male witch in the fifties-ish, fall in love (Evan Peters, obviously) then he... I don't know, disappears? Then Jessica meets him again present day, he hasn't aged, and it flicks back and forth from flashbacks. I basically want a threesome between two people over time and space._

There's a thin shard of glass in the pocket of her black cotton dress and the blade of a pencil sharpener twirling silver through her nicotine fingers. She's the angel of death, who cut the strings of a soul with a whisper as soft as her counterpart's scythe is sharp. Standing in front of his mirror, mouthing the words 'I'm a monster' until she can't tell the shape of each letter apart. Imagining how he'll trudge upstairs, world weary, pull the at the black tie that's threatening to suffocate him, let her take his face in her hands as she whispers 'I'm sorry.' She'll give him a smile that's the real apology: sorry there's nothing I can say that actually means anything. Or maybe he'll cry, whisper 'Why?' And she'll bite her tongue to keep her confession locked away. It's fighting its way out of her, every second. She's possessed by it, consumed by the effort that silence requires.

Because he doesn't need to know that the girl he might just love persuaded his sister to throw herself in front of a car.

The glass is one panel of original Tiffany light fixture. She made Nora cry. She made Nora bleed. It's all her fault, the simpering bitch who should, by now, be dust. This whole poisoned house, ghost of a home, charade of a place. The mansion built in her honour, Satan's waiting room. The splendour that's oh so dignified, oh so perfect to honour the dead. Chalk another name on the wall, because our little earth bound demon's claimed another.

Addie's body is downstairs. In an open. Fucking. Casket. Violet's tempted to play poltergeist, because this bullshit affair isn't respectful. It's not what Addie would have wanted. They're not here for her. They're here to prop Vivien up, to drink whisky because it's practically mandatory, to see the Murder House without the eleven dollar charge.

And then there's footsteps and trudge upstairs he does, but she was wrong. He's not world weary. He's pissed. She can tell from the subtle way he upturns his desk.

"Tate."

He looks up with wide eyes and a mouth that's struggling to form anything other than shaking gasps. He's across the room, crushing her to him, making her shake right along with him. It's like calming a horse or a child; stroking and shushing and forcing the world _out_ because it doesn't belong in this cocoon of despair and blind panic.

"Why... why weren't you there, Vi? I swear, if one more person told me how special she was, I would have- I thought I was going to black out. Why weren't you _there_?"

"Things like this aren't for the dead, Tate. They're for the living. Addie's not here anymore. It didn't feel right."

"What about me? I had to sit there beside her fucking _coffin_ and shake people's hands."

She takes one of those hands in hers, pressing it to her lips. Lets a tear fall. Keeps up the act. Violet knows better than he does that Addie's at peace, that there was a damning alternative twenty feet closer to the property line. She was merciful. The guilt isn't for Addie. It's for the brother she's left behind.

Violet's searching for a way to bring him back to her; to remind him that she's different. She understands how hard it can be to let go of the dead. She can't get the hang of it herself. Then she remembers the little silver sliver of death in her pocket. She knows where it came from, what it signifies. Loss of innocence, awakening; this little thing we give to first graders and expect them not to realise we've just given them something thirty seconds effort from a knife.

It was hidden in the death scene. She wants to believe he hid it there thinking of her. Or that it's an ironic homage. She's not the little girl victim, but the knife itself.

"I like this one. I found it in Romeo and Juliet. It's pretty, really."

The blade's up for his inspection, as he wipes tears from the edges of his eyes. It seemed to focus him, the small metal rectangle with a hole in the centre. It has one curved edge, and his eyes follow Violet's thumb as she runs it back and forth. It was... feminine. He'd broken it out of a pink plastic sharpener he found in Addie's pencil case.

The pretty blade with its pretty curved edge is presing into Violet's thumb now, drawing blood. Enough to bloom but not to drip. She's holding it up like it's a glass of single malt, whispering "To Addie.", and moves to suck the wound clean.

But his tongue is faster and he swirls her blood across his teeth. Addie's not here to taste it herself, but if she was she'd say it tasted like pennies. Tate would have to hide his loose change because this is the kind of gruesome pretend she always loved.

Violet's blushing, feeling guilty, feeling hot. His teeth around her thumb and the slow suck of his tongue has her stomach bottoming out. She's the demon in white, the unpicked flower, the pure of heart and black of soul. He's innocent in the ways that matter, like body counts, and a sinner in small ways that she wishes he'd show her.

Every crime to her name serves a higher purpose; Addie's death was simply Tate. That meant greed, really. But she'd been far too selfless over the years. This time she's taking what is most likely hers, from the way Tate's gripping her hand. Forever, this time. No take backs, no loopholes.

There are fifty other people in the house and that means they'll be left alone. Nobody to hear them over the wails and the gossip. Nobody to stop her press her lips to his, feather light, hands hovering on the sides of his face, too timid, too self aware, too perfect to stop him from forcing her lips open with his, walking her to the wall. A body too small to break free from his arms, framing her, caging her.

She might be taking advantage of him in his time of grief. She's not sure if she feels appropriately ashamed.

Her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair that still smells of soap. He washed it twenty minutes before the mourners arrived. He cried in the shower. She watched him.

She knows the landscape of his face better than the layout of this house. She knows every thought that's running through his head because she's had it too. And she can't breathe when his fingers are tracing the hem of her skirt, the one that she wore on Chad's recommendation about funeral attire.

She's the one pulling the black tie from his neck, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. Her bones have gone soft from the liquifying pressure of his breath on her cheek, melted from the heat of his mouth on her collar bone.

He stills. There are footsteps on the stairs, slow enough that it can't not be Vivien.

His eyes are dark as he remembers where he is, what's downstairs. She straightens her dress with a sad smile.

...

It takes all her concentration to open the gate. He never asks where she goes when she leaves. When the house flips a few switches in his head that tell him she's walking down the street, out of the house. Violet wishes it could do the same for her. But instead she's back in the attic, in a bird's nest of quilts and pillows that she calls a bed. She likes sleeping right above him. It does for the nights when she's too restless to stay in his bed, too like a ghost to bear the stench of living flesh. Those nights all she can see is a corpse that's decomposing just as fast as it's growing.

But soon she's back at the foot of his bed, drawn by the hypnotic rise and fall that tells her he's alive. His eyelids are flickering and she traces the circles under his eyes with a fingertip. Kisses her way down his neck, fingers splayed across a chest she dreams is pocked with bullets holes to match hers. Whispers her secrets in his ears and does her best to give him nightmares.

He's tossing and she half hopes he'll wake up. He can tell himself it's a dream because she'd never be in his bedroom at this hour. She wouldn't mind that; she's always half wanted to be someone's wet dream.

If she dreamt anymore it would be about him.


End file.
